


Slipping

by ArgentNoelle



Series: How Not to Spend Eternity [7]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Adult Ciel Phantomhive, Animal Instincts, Animal Metaphors, BAMF Ciel Phantomhive, Caring, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Ciel Phantomhive Being an Asshole, Ciel Phantomhive is Annoyed, Claustrophobia, Dark Ciel Phantomhive, Death, Demon Ciel Phantomhive, Demon Deals, Demons, Dubious Consent, Ethics, Evil, F/M, Fear, Friendship/Love, Gen, Good and Evil, Harm to Animals, Hatred, M/M, Magic, Magical Duel, Medical Trauma, Memories, Mistrust, Mythology References, Nostalgia, POV Ciel Phantomhive, Philosophy, Post-Season/Series 02, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Psychological Trauma, Season/Series 02, Trauma, hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 9,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26786533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle
Summary: Drawn in by curiosity, Ciel investigates the disturbing force at the heart of Project SPIDER, run by the government agency that has been carrying out the Watchdog's duties since his death so many years before.
Relationships: Ciel Phantomhive/OC, Elizabeth Midford/Ciel Phantomhive, Sebastian Michaelis & Ciel Phantomhive, Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Series: How Not to Spend Eternity [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1044467
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	1. Crumbling is not an instant's Act

__

_1960_

* * *

The contract was full of words. They had been typed out, and faxed from machine to nothingness and back again. He was hungry, yes; though it had not yet even begun to be unbearable; a mere edge of hollowness, not agony. On the metal folding chair, he leant back, balancing on its two legs while his own legs crossed. He had not needed dress shoes with heels for years. The papers made an insistent noise, a rustling as Philip read through the type, grunting. He made notes in pen.

Edwin, Ciel recalled. He had been the best. The best that Ciel had gotten to eat, anyhow, for Julie had really been the best. Too good; and the memory of her did nothing to sate his hunger. It was another taste; not regret but something quieter, more thoughtful; he could get lost in it for days. But Edwin—the fear in his eyes in the end, and his helpless struggle, sun on skin. A warm drink. Like tea in the depth of winter when the storms raged by, like fire in the depth of winter, years upon years ago, when he had been a Phantomhive.

It was strange, to know that without him the mantle had passed on, no longer a watch-dog for a dead queen but something, nonetheless—a sentry on a hill, looking out. Killing by night.

Ciel had realized eventually that if he did not move swiftly time would take its own course, behind his back: if he waited, or made another contract, it might be years before his gaze fell here again. And he was curious. Curious at project SPIDER, which name hardly seemed coincidence. Curious at the _thing_ he had felt, in the depths of the building, as he passed. It was no mere wickedness. It was a low sick ache of power, like a burn, wrapped round with spells and buried. And something else, a hint of familiarity.

What else? An altar to a false god.

"That will do," said Philip.

Ciel opened his eyes, looked over. He gestured toward the pen, permissively. The lordliness, he knew, rankled. Philip pressed his mouth together, disgruntled, and for a moment Ciel scented a spark of indecision. Not fear for his soul: no, Philip viewed his soul as nothing more than real estate with which he could gain something better. But now the man wondered if it really would be something better.

No creature can truly act like a king if he isn't. Which meant, of course, that Ciel, who had been on this earth long before Philip and would be here long after him, was something powerful, something to be wary of.

Ciel tilted his head; said nothing; and let the moment pass.

Philip pressed the pen down. He signed.


	2. A fundamental pause

Philip took him into the government building, and now Ciel, who had been called Alex, had a pass to match his new face. It was a Midford face; the face of a knight. As though it belonged with rapier in hand, bright and shining.

There was nothing more untoward about the frowning exterior of this building than any he had been in, even the worst whorehouses and charnel-houses and churches; there was nothing in the concrete walls. The smell indoors was clean, falsely clean and it smelt of chemicals and harsh soap and old blood. There was nothing worse about the souls here than anywhere, except that the focus in them was sharp; scalpel sharp and sure like Aunt Red's hands, but with none of her sad eyes. The animal suffering was fainter; they had no souls to taste, but the sweat and blood and fear was the same; the minds were the same. But they could suffer and then go back to dust and be nothing, and they would not be judged. It was a kindness.

"You eat things like us," Philip said. The office, in the center of the compound, had no windows. But the sky outside had been grey and chilled. Ciel tried to hold the pinpricks of rain, that smell on his skin; but it had already begun to fade. Now it was just Philip, the human flesh of him, and the papers that filled the room, crawling with mites, and the dust and the detergents, the slick metal of each frame on the file cabinet door. "If you aren't stopped. That's reason enough to order you not to."

"I told you," Ciel said. "I can't. Not anyone but you."

"You want to, though," Philip said. "You've imagined it, haven't you."

Ciel shrugged.

"Hmm," Philip said. "But you say you're not dangerous."

"I never said that," Ciel said. "If you wish to believe it I won't stop you."

"Mm-hm," Philip said. He walked around the room. Slowly. "I've worked with animals before," he said. "And if I've learned nothing else I've learned one thing: anything can be dangerous, given the right conditions. Take the rats, for example. Nothing is more useful to us. Useful. You understand? But if we didn't take care—if we let our guard down for a moment—"

"I know," Ciel said. "I've seen it."

"Rats. They'll eat flesh. Living flesh. A baby in its crib. Anyone who can't move away. If there's enough of them. And if we get hungry enough, we'll eat them. How about that."

"Disgusting," Ciel said.

"Of course it's disgusting. Everything is disgusting. That's not the point. The point is the moral. We take control, we use them, and in the end it's survival of the fittest. And the fittest is the one with more numbers behind him. More tools. More exits."

"More teeth," said Ciel, and smiled; and he did not bother to make them look anything but sharply pointed.

"That's why I don't trust you," Philip said. "That's why I don't trust anyone."

"Have you ever tried?" Ciel said.

Philip looked at him. "Trying to get under my skin already."

"Only curious."

"You're not curious," Philip said. "You're toying with me. If I give you anything."

"You've already given me everything," Ciel said.

"Not yet," Philip said. "You look like everything I lust after. It does me no good to deny it; we both know that's why you did it. You, what, read my mind?"

"I can't read your mind," Ciel said.

"And I can't trust a word out of your mouth," Philip said. "But we have to move from the assumption that neither of us is lying. At least for now. Fine, then: get rid of those pretty eyes. I saw them, glowing when it… happened, when we signed."

So he let them turn bright and slitted: that color between cherry and neon, metallurgic. "Is that what you really look like?" Philip said.

"It could be."

"Useless," Philip said. "Useless." He looked at Ciel's flashing eyes. Chuckled. "Well. Still somewhere to go. If there's only one thing I've learned—"

Ciel rolled his eyes, and Philip snapped his fingers. "You. Boy. You won't roll your eyes. That's an order. I'm your superior whether we're alone or not, and that means I'm afforded respect."

Ciel stepped forward. Looked down those few centimetres and watched Philip's eyes drag upward and his body tense. "What can a rat know of respect?" Ciel said. Pointed. With eyes and teeth.

"Just what a human can," Philip said, and did not back away. "Consequences. Fear. Reward. The Pavlovian machine. That's all we are."


	3. Dilapidation’s processes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings at end of chapter

In the office, with the door locked, he pleasured him, and the floor was cold.

The floor of the cult had been cold, too, Ciel remembered.

The floor of the cult had been cold, though they had torches; though they had gleaming metal, set red hot, and the metal had burned. The brand was no longer there. His new form admitted of nothing.

Philip, with a calculating gaze, looked down at him between the folds of his eyelids. He was not passionate, but interested; more interested in Ciel's reaction. "You're good at this," he said levelly.

"I'm here to grant your wishes," Ciel said, which was not an answer. He smiled insincerely.

Philip petted roughly at the fine, blond hair on his head and then rubbed a strand between forefinger and thumb; pulled it out. It curled, amorphous, between them. "I suppose you have DNA like the rest of us," he said.

Ciel was silent. But when Philip put the strand under glass and grunted down at the thing, looking at its minute scales, it was a piece of hair like any other. "Not physical," Philip said. Then tapped his finger, slowly, against his mouth. "Not immediately noticeable at least." And his gaze went back to Ciel, who pulled himself up and straightened his suit. "I thought there'd be some difference. You looked like another man before this, anyhow; I should have taken some samples from him."

"You couldn't have," Ciel said levelly.

Philip watched him. "Ah. Not part of the deal. Well, we'll make do."

* * *

The group of them, men working on horrors, sat around the sagging tables, the threadbare chairs and wrote their reports; tossed bawdy jokes back and forth and were tired, but none of them stopped. No door on the room, the square of it was open, leading outside if they turned and walked the other way. But they did not see the door. Fear and reward. They had money, and prestige, and the kind of power most men dream of and very few are permitted to exercise. And if they tried to leave—

Well. They did not try to leave.

Ciel introduced himself, and there was wariness, at first, at this new young scientist in their midst, because none of them opened easily. But it was not bad for a starting point, and when Philip came by to check on their reports and everyone else grumbled, and Ciel did too, in the same easy, tired way, he was stopped from dispersing with the others with a short word.

"New kid. Yes, you. What do you call this?"

"Paperwork?" Ciel said.

There were a few stifled laughs amid those almost to the door and the dispersing men escaped.

"Cocky. You could handle it?"

"What kind of scientist would I be—" Ciel said; he stopped, and laughed a little, hollowly. "Damn. Of course I can, master."

"Master?" Philip's lips curled. "We can't have any of that. Sir will do."

He looked at Ciel's dancing green eyes and added belatedly, "consider it an order."

"Of course, sir," Ciel said. "If that's what you want, sir."

"You know what I want," Philip muttered. He handed the paperwork back. "Re-type this. Without the sarcasm this time."

* * *

Philip had put the contract in an envelope in his house, in his safe; but that meant nothing. The only mark that mattered was not their signatures on the line (Ciel had drawn his sigil) only the marks that appeared on their skin. Philip's was on the bottom of his foot. Weak; thready. The mark on Ciel's left hand slid from sight the moment it did not glow, and so he did not wear gloves.

Ciel was there to experiment just like the others were; in a lab coat with new hems, bleached, and a project to work on. It was all there, in the paperwork: an entire false name, and a false address, a false family and work history. But Philip did not feel safe with him in the house.

"The office is good enough," Philip said. "It locks; no one will bother you there." He gave Ciel a cool look. "Not like you'd be bothered. Damn. Sometimes it really seems like I'm talking to a human being."

"A being," Ciel said, catching the key that Philip threw him. It bit into his clenched palm.

"Sure, a being. Just what I ordered, right? If there's one thing I know about hunting…"

Ciel echoed his words mockingly; and Philip watched him, waited for him to finish.

"And what do you know about hunting, then?" Ciel said at last.

"There are two ways to go about it: either you strike fast or you wait. That's what you do, isn't it. Wait."

"Well," Ciel said. "I have the time for it."

* * *

And that was it: put away at the end of each day with the other things. The order served much better than the key he locked himself in with. He wouldn't be doing any detective work during the night.

He did not sleep, but paced, or sat upon the desk and read the reports. Magic was quite open to him, with Philip's expectations: he made himself a false sky of stars and hung it from the tiles. If he let his eyes unfocus, it almost seemed real.

* * *

Philip was a one-note mouthful at best, but sustenance enough. Only: there was a sour edge to it. Like something rotting. When Ciel tried to chase the hint, it was elusive, dipped away under the exterior until he almost thought that he had imagined it. But he hadn't: the soul had sensed his regard and shrunk back. Hidden from him. _That_ should not be possible. Perhaps it wasn't the soul at all but something in the soul. Like an ingredient carelessly added. Like something dead in the house.

* * *

Blows still hurt, of course; and electrical burns were a novelty.

"A novelty, eh," Philip said. "Any man would have been screaming." He unhooked wires and Ciel sat up, a fluid motion: fair hair tumbled from his scalp onto his hands. The side of his face, which was melted, melted and burning, was a novelty by definition. It had never happened to him before. Between one breath and the next, none of it was there: and he looked as beautiful as he had before, and as unmarred.

He smirked. "I'm not a man."

"Close enough for me."

They stepped out of the room. The notes, which Philip had taken, clutched in his hand. There was heightened blood, and breath, and sight, at seeing something he desired pulled to pieces, but Philip had not been going to stop, just because Ciel could look like something he desired. As a protective measure, it was incomplete.

Not on everyone, Ciel thought. Not on Edwin. He tried to imagine the taste of Edwin's soul but all he could imagine was the hair falling onto his hands, singed off, burning and the clicking of Philip's pen. The brand on his back had still hurt more. He clung to that; and the memory of the cult. Those cold stone floors and the dark at night and candles, and the multicolored light falling through the glass windows, a stain, and the knife through his heart, and the blood.

"But I don't forget," Philip said.

"Yes, I know," Ciel said. "Sticking it in a rat is bestiality."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> torture, memories of torture, dubcon (all non-explicit)


	4. Are organized Decays—

He used his own blood and bone. Watched the rats grow old at double speed, or stay young and suspended, until at last the failure was too much, too much for the workings of their own interiors, and they split, scattered, and at last died. No one could stop death. Not forever. Not through science; at least, a science without the key to the correct proportions: now, Hannah had been very apt at turning mortal flesh into a seething cauldron, congealing, dripping, a nightmare in the shape of a man.

While he worked he moved through the corridors, while he waited for experiments to be done and rats to die. Walking past the productive scurry of the scientists. He had not yet seen anything that protected the country. There were spies, of course, captured and screaming their secrets under the influence of drugs, and there were weapons more outlandish and all very, very simple: pain and control. He followed the corridors and waited for that sense, again, of the thing that lay in the center of the SPIDER's web. My own personal Moriarty, Ciel told himself, with irony, to distract from the nagging restlessness under his skin. He had thought it would be clear, from here, but even in the lower levels it smelled only like something rotting and sweet. But it _did_ have weight; it had weight, especially, in the file cabinets, filled with reports, and in the torture rooms where the screams were. Those places of worship and sacrifice. Like the sour note on Philip's soul it moved from him, elusive. It was only a smell, permeable and everywhere, without apparent source. Perhaps, in fact, the god was elsewhere. But no: there had been _something_ protected by wards, down in this darkness. Some monster, hiding in the center of the maze.

There was something else, too: a woman with a demon on her skin. Helen. Helen Abberline. She was beautiful, like the image of an old friend. Held under deep water. Drowning. She'd walked in the other day and no one had made remark, and he knew what her wish had been.

She hadn't noticed him. He had stood away from her, and let the swirl of humanity before him cover his own scent. He wasn't here to get involved in another demon's business; even for the sake of old friends. She was nothing like Fred Abberline had been, really; except that she, too, would die.

It was her that made the joke about a labyrinth, turned around on the way to her project. She had a true smile that lit her dark eyes like velvet; he saw it on her as she joked with a man whose name he did not know, whose arousal he could smell, overpowering. It all stayed here, the smells. Without wind and sky and moving things, it stuck onto the walls and floor. Ink smells and printer smells, plastic machine smells. He had never thought to wish for the good clean stink of droppings on a muddy road and the haze over London when he had been a child. The still air in this place, the rotting thing inside, combined, made it putrid. A filth he couldn't clean, sunk into the building's bones. In the night, pacing around the office he had locked himself inside, even the false stars smelled like oozing puss, and he vanished them.

* * *

Sitting in the office.

Sitting in the room at night.

Sitting in the darkness and hugging his knees to his chest, he did not think about Sebastian, and he did not think about his Midford face, which looked like cousins long dead. The stars were out; he had gotten rid of them and pulled his own self around him until he could smell nothing but hunger, and he thought of the cult. Those cold floors and the slant of the lights. It had almost progressed to being a pastime, he thought ironically. Poking at bad memories like at a loose tooth.

Loose with rot. Inflamed and sugared chalk white and brown, and scurrying aside when he followed it, like spiders. The thing he was searching for knew he looked; knew and lead him astray. And if he had no string to follow, he would—

* * *

Another day. Though day and night were really the same here. Here where nothing moved. It was no worse than the rest of the earth, but there was no ventilation and perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps if he could breathe only a moment of pure air it would not be so hard to bear.

"So you can look like anything? Interesting." Philip was behind the desk. He was writing.

Ciel was male and female, young and old, creature and man, sea and stone. But it all turned to machines when they wrote.

It did not even feel quite right, the way it always did otherwise, loosing himself of his human form and turning to wind. For the wind in this room was cut off from the sky, and the concrete walls were heavy.

* * *

Philip smelled of rubber gloves and the sour note on his soul and the tired scent of worn-out, everyday evil rubbed onto his skin like newsprint, and only very faintly under that of himself. He had never exactly stood still long enough to smell like himself, Ciel decided. If anyone ever did. In the argument between Nature and Nurture he chose Nurture every time. He knew how much could change with one's situation. Knew it like the red-hot-clean emptiness when he had been stabbed through the heart in the cult, before Sebastian had stitched him back together with his own sinews. Needle and thread taken from darkness. Pass of a hand taken from darkness. A breath taken from darkness and breathed into him. It had been a long time since Ciel thought so much on his own beastly nature, and still longer since he had blamed Sebastian for it; but Sebastian was not here and one always finds it easier to blame the thing one has affection for when it is away.

The breath moved out hot onto his shoulder. The limbs moved, and Philip, with the heavy haze of arousal painted over him like a heat-wave, moved, and Ciel thought: Pasiphae, cursed by an angry god, had intercourse with a beast. She knew no shame at all.

He tried to follow the sour scent clinging to Philip's soul. And like always, it ducked away leaving images and emptiness, shadows behind it. Darting back into the maze. Here's one thing about hunting, Ciel thought. When hunting a fox, a clever fox, you have to follow it till it tires, till it has nowhere left to duck into. Each time he followed the thing down another corridor he put a bit of his own magic into it, and if it did not really cleanse the place it at least cleared the air, like spraying perfume. Underneath, the cyst still was, but it did not like the places through which Ciel wandered, through which Ciel put too much of his own power.

But they were both of them canny. He didn't know which would tire first, and he wished for Sebastian, as Philip dug his nails in, huffed in and out like a bull. He had alighted upon this branch out of curiosity, and gotten tangled with something far, far older than him.

It was… faded, perhaps. Not alive in the sense that things ought to be alive, but it was still too powerful to risk looking away, because to lose this duel would be to lose himself.


	5. 'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul

“Alex,” Philip said, carefully. “Are you there?”

He blinked. Something was wet against his face. Blood. He’d bit his lip. Blood.

Ciel nodded, licking it back. There was something off about even that, something that hovered with everything else, but he put it out of mind and looked back at his contractor.

“Yes,” he said, with an irreverent lilt. “Sir. Nothing wrong with me, sir.”

“We aren’t the military, demon,” Philip said. “Just one sir. And you. You’re everything that’s wrong in the world.”

“I’m flattered,” Ciel said, and grinned. He unfolded himself, and, because they were alone, let his nails become claws. Philip didn’t flinch, and Ciel felt admiration for it, of an abstract sort. Let’s see: too many broken bones, popped back into place. Nothing like a little variation. He’d begun to tire of the eyes of old rats, staring out of a youth’s body. Their animal minds confused, and slow, and angry. Perhaps, when he went to file the paperwork, he could catch another snag of the monster, where it let down its guard, luxuriating in the crafted excuses with empty repetitive words that said nothing, the secret purposes that gave everything weight, even death and the babbling of a stripped-down mind.

“Of course you are, you beast,” Philip said. “What else should I expect.”

Ciel laughed. In the empty office with the snap of latex and gloves. Philip was a straightforward enough soul, but he had his doubling back, and he didn’t care for the pretty illusion. When they were alone he liked the beast’s eyes and the beast’s crooked nails and the sharp serrated teeth, to remind himself that he was human and Ciel was not.

* * *

They are all subjects when you put electricity through them.

Ciel blinked, and with the slow slide of his eyes shut there was no more begging visage, no more of that familiar, complex evil pieced together out of laws and customs and fear. He could almost imagine it something simpler, something less unclean. The smell remained, but that was only to be expected. He grimaced.

This man—was one of the men he worked with, Ciel thought. He found it hard to tell them apart, with his focus on the fight; the way it took every ounce of his concentration. And it was necessary for Ciel to be here because they were ‘sharing the fruits of their labor’—playing at humanity. Gaining trust.

An agonized groan split the air. Boils erupted from the soul’s skin. Ciel’s eyes skated over it to the man and nodded. “Effective,” he said. His tongue felt leaden. It was all disgusting, a deep disgust like particulate matter in the air. 

There were bathrooms in the building he had never entered. He did, after that room, wondering if perhaps he turned the tap the water would wash something clear. But the water smelled like rust and stone over his hands, sinking like the smell into the space behind his nails, which were painted to look human. The disgust rose again, with physical force like nausea. He staggered to the urinal and spat bloody spit and stomach acid. There was no food to come out, for the mortal form was nothing but an illusion, though right now, pressing his hands onto the tile wall, which was slick with invisible filth, it was hard to remember. He leaned his forehead against the wall, flinching at the way it stunk, like the air stunk, like the water had. Even blinking did nothing to clear the haze. He pressed his hands together, and carefully scratched off the paint, to the black underneath.

Staring at that, for a moment, steadied him. That emptiness. Uncovered and base, without illusion. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to clean it of the spit and the blood, and straightened, and pressed his magic into the walls, which resisted the intrusion, which cried out against the intrusion. But he stayed until the smell was less, until the room was only a shadow of that constant irritation, and he breathed out in satisfaction, and allowed himself a smile: darkly gleeful. It had been so  _ long _ since he’d played a proper game against a rat.

“Every day your haunt grows smaller,” he whispered, words dropping into nothingness. “Do you feel it? The walls closing in around you, your own passageways blocked off? I know you do. It’s made you angry.” His grin stretched wide, wider with teeth, and the edges of his form glimmered into night, for a moment. “But there’s no escape. My steps will dog you. The burning smell of flames will follow you. Wherever you go.”


	6. A Cuticle of Dust

“The rats always die.”

“They do, sir,” Ciel agreed. “Everyone  _ else _ , sir, seems satisfied enough. I think they enjoy watching the dumb things suffer.”

“Well I don’t,” Philip said. “You’re getting nowhere.” He glanced over. Could not stop that instinctive shiver at the blank redness of the rat’s eyes, and looked back at Ciel; but Ciel’s own eyes were like the rat’s, now, and offered no relief. “I’d almost think you didn’t care about the reason for all this. Didn’t care if any of it’s useful to the crown and the country’s borders, useful and usable against the enemy. But oh, yes—you don’t. I’m the one who gives you orders, boy, and don’t forget.”

“How ever could I,” Ciel said. “At least you’ve got a new way to kill rats.”

Philip shook his head, slowly. “Wring the damn thing’s neck.” They walked out of the room, Ciel a few steps behind the way most of his contractors had preferred. “And I do mean  _ you _ ,” Philip added sardonically.

“But you’d lose yourself of such an opportunity for pain,” Ciel said, baiting.

“Do you think I’m a sadist?” Philip said.

“Mm… yes, sir. I did always get that impression, sir.”

“And you do nothing but enjoy it,” Philip said. “I’ve never seen a creature that didn’t hate it, you know. But you.”

“What, and I thought you grew among humans,” Ciel said. “You do nothing but find ways to create pain.”

“I think,” said Philip, “your perception is skewed.”

“My perception is vast. Certainly vaster than yours.”

“Oh is it now,” Philip said. He smirked. Then, in another moment continued brusquely, “It doesn’t matter. We have new needs and everything follows along. There’s a project that could use you.”

“And?” Ciel said.

“We want to create a weakness. Or pry into one. That social weakness, dependency, that need—you know what it can lead to. What people will do, if they need another person enough.”

“It could be love.”

“If love exists we’re not creating it here,” Philip said. “No. This is addiction, plain and simple.”

“Plain and simple. So I inject more rats. Or people this time?”

“Not quite,” Philip said. “This time you’re the subject.”

“Oh,” Ciel said. “Joy.”

They assessed each other, carefully. Ciel bared his teeth, and Philip did not blink, and then he said, “Now, you’re going to react to the drugs like a human would, unless it gets to the point where you’d sustain permanent damage. That’s an order.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Ciel said.

Philip grunted. “Cheek. Get in there and protect the free world, would you?”


	7. A Borer in the Axis

_1961_

“Lau. You should be dead.”

“Yes, I should be, shouldn’t I,” Lau agreed amiably. Eyes closed, he sat in the gloom, among the sleepers. “No worries, Earl. I’ve been dead for years by now.”

“I saw you fall into the sea,” Ciel said; sitting on a low couch, the table between them; and Ran-Mao’s slow unblinking gaze watched him. Concerned. “With blood pouring from the wound…”

It was still there, still pouring out to stain Lau’s clothes, muddying the fine silk. But the gloom and the sweet, heavy air, and the muttering of the sleepers, and the low lights cast inexorable shadows. Half-flickering; one moment Lau seemed whole, and the next, a skeleton emptied of flesh but the muscles, oozing, glistening and red, and the eyes, or holes where the eyes had been.

“You of all people should know it’s possible to survive even a fatal wound.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Ciel said, but the wound in his own chest throbbed, his heart stuttering, sputtering open. It gaped. Sebastian had saved him from that, saved him with the contract. No. It was not a knife-edged cut after all, but a bullet wound of black powder. Sebastian’s handiwork. His fourth death.

“Did I mean something?” Lau sounded surprised. “We’re all dead. Me. And you are, of course. And Angela too. We don’t have to be ourselves, you know: we could be something else, dreaming of our death. Don’t you think?”

“I’m not something else,” Ciel said.

“Of course not,” Lau said. He got up and walked past the edges of the light, into the back room, and Ciel followed.

The portraits, in the wall, were of his parents’ face in the flames. A stitched-together thing of too much horror to reside in memory. He snapped his gloved fingers and watched the portraits vanish, leaving only the stained paper, with a spot where the frame had been. He walked on, candle in hand, looking for the one beside him. It was hard to see.

“Who are you looking for?” Lau said, turning back.

Light streamed in the open door. Lau was silhouetted, and the edges of him glowed.

“You’re an enemy,” Ciel said, remembering that ship, the deck creaking under his feet. He thought he smelled sea-brine, and heard the wide strong flap of sails.

“Only as the wind blows,” Lau said. “Anyone can be an enemy, if you make one of them.” He paused, and laughed. “This is too heavy for me,” he said at last. “I’d rather go to the party. Wouldn’t you?”

“What party?” Ciel said. But Lau had gone. Through the door, perhaps, and Ciel stepped up the gangplank onto the Campania. Ah, I remember this, he thought. I’m looking for missing corpses. Druitt’s work, and the secret society. The party was in full swing, musicians playing, petits fours and champagne. Lizzie, holding a strawberry tart, waved at him. He waved back, feeling silly and awkward. I have to find the culprits, he thought.

“Won’t you stay a moment?” Lizzie said. The tart still in her hand, outstretched; fresh berries and a dusting of sugar, sweet.

“‘Yes, stay,’ says Emily,” said Snake, standing beside her with a glass. The bubbles floated upward; golden.

“I can’t,” Ciel explained. “I have work to do. I’ll come back when I’m done.” He turned and hurried past them.

“No,” he heard Lizzie say, very softly. “You won’t.” 

He was in the bowels of the ship. In the ship, in their coffins and caskets, were bodies, mummified, stuffed with straw, chased with silver and gold. They stirred to life, followed him with their heavy steps.

“Damn you, Sebastian,” he muttered, from his perch atop the crates, his arms, holding his pistol, straining. He counted how many shots he could get out, and the number of moving bodies. “Where are you?”

“Right here, young master,” Sebastian said. Ciel let out a shaking breath.

“Oh,” he said. Silly of me, he thought. How could I have missed him, standing beside me this whole time?

Blood arced through the air, and when it was over Ciel and Sebastian stood together amid the straw-covered deck. “There are more of them,” Sebastian said. So they ran, faster than light, for wherever light goes, it finds darkness already there, waiting.

“I’ve seen creatures like _this_ before,” Grell said. “That marionette, wasn’t it?”

“Drossel Keinz,” Ciel said. “It took—Lizzie!” He turned, suddenly afraid for her, but Lizzie was beside him. Her petticoats covered in blood, and a brave smile. Not the heavy axe, but her own blades in hand. 

“No matter what the cost,” she said. 

Undertaker cackled beside them. With a shining swipe of his old staff, it had turned into a glancing reaper blade. “Well said, my dear.”

“Now then,” Sebastian said, clapping his hands together. “One, two, three: _London bridge is falling down_ …”

They leapt forward. Before them marched the hordes in their own finery, the lifelike, mechanical dolls, powered by lost souls. The whirring of a chainsaw, and Grell’s red hair and coat, bullet-fast. Lizzie’s balletic twirl, gracefully cutting them down before her. Undertaker’s lightning strikes, powerful and unpredictable. Another motor zooming by, and Knox’s fierce grin. And Sebastian, dancing by like a shadow, singing and destroying at the same time: “ _wood and clay will wash away…_ ” limbs juddering to a halt, their glass eyes looking forward. “ _Bricks and mortar will not stay_ …” and their set mouths, painted perfect. “ _Iron and steel will bend and bow…_ ” with the sound of water, rushing in, as the deck tilted and groaned. “ _Silver and gold will be stolen away: my fair lady._ ” The floor around them had cleared; the bodies fallen. Though the fight still raged on either side, there was a moment’s calm, and Sebastian and Ciel faced each other in mirrored pose. The head that Sebastian had wrenched free fell down, filled with dust, into the sea. The arm with its petrified hand Ciel let fall from his own. They reached out, bloodied glove to bloodied glove. 

And Ciel woke from the dream.

* * *

“Alex. You’re here.”

“Where else would I be?” Ciel said. His gaze skimmed down, seagulls over the ocean of paperwork, alighting on nothing.

Philip sighed, and stared down too. “Can’t get anything out of them,” he muttered.

“What are you looking for?” Ciel said.

“A way in.”

“There’s always one.”

“But if you blast through,” Philip said. He tapped his fingers upon the paperwork. The words opened and crawled up his fingers. “If you destroy what’s inside, what have you even got?”

“Mm,” Ciel said. “Victory, anyhow.”

The thing in the center of the labyrinth darted away like the memory of a dream. Instead of following it, Ciel followed the shadow it left behind, the empty shape it caused as it grew like strangling vines. He thought of the cult, and the shape of the brand, which had been in the window of the church—Angela’s church. 

_Angela_.

The rotting thing, at the center of the labyrinth, burrowed downward, leaping into a bedrock of white light.

* * *

The rats always die, whether slow or fast. But some died with others, and some died alone; and some left their blood and their teeth behind. And some left their teeth behind, which bit and were dissolved in the cleaning agents, which scrubbed the white cages. The white cages full of unwanted children with blank eyes. The stone floors. The cleansing with their robes. Dark robes to hide in darkness, and decorated robes to hide in ceremony, and white robes to hide in efficiency. The sacrifices died to feed the beast, which was always hungry, and had eyes like them. 

The sacrifices which were chosen. The innocent and the guilty, which looked the same under bright lights, pierced with needles. And the trolleys which pushed past. The tape recorders, which spoke. And the paperwork, an unholy book full of pages and ink and injunctions. The rats, which become humans when you look at them. The humans, which look only forward, because the blood has been cleaned. And the tools are sharp. They start cutting with precision, because after the eyes are out, and the teeth are out, and the ears are out, the violence is easy. They fold up their iniquities and file them with the sins of others, where they can hide.

And eat those with limbs like them.


	8. An Elemental Rust—

The body was in its containers, separated into pieces. Limbs extended, and a foot. Eyes and genitals. It did not fit together, anymore, this thing, and the white clothes had long ago rotted into dust. The starlight hair was harsh under the bright humming lights. The face, what was left of it, was serene, with no wrinkles on its brow. No expression of horror or victory, only the slack still face of death. The door, which creaked open, let the coldness out in tendrils as Ciel walked between morgue cabinets and labelled containers, peeling stickers touched with ink. It should have been too cold for rot, but rot it did: something liquid under the perfect skin. He could slide open the drawers as much as he liked, stare down at the shimmering feathers, shimmering like spider-silk. But the monster was strongest here, in the center of the labyrinth that had been built around it, and it stopped his hand. He stared down. Feathers, glimmering. But there were shadows under them: other feathers: what is left when the stars have gone. 

“Sebastian,” Ciel said, realizing what that faint familiarity had been. The demon’s feathers, glossy like a crow’s and darker, did not move when he picked them up and turned them between his hands. They were dead, too, the way everything that has been cut off is dead, but it held memory in it. And when Ciel held it to his own mouth and past his own teeth, it tasted like darkness. Night air and covers pulled up to the shoulders, the space between moonlight; sharp words and whirlpools behind eyes hungering for a soul. The reddish color and the scent of strong tea; books of immeasurable age crackling as the pages turned, spoken in an ancient tongue. Delighted laughter and slow-simmering anger, spices and chocolate.

When he bit the feathers they cracked, as sharp as glass and thunder. When he swallowed them they tumbled into his magic, set the edges of the room with unnatural voids, and the vortex that was him was crow against midnight sky. 

* * *

They left the building in a line under the weeping sky, rubber and petrol. Under the brim of her hat, Ciel saw Helen Abberline shiver. Her hand hesitated on the handle of the car. In the open emptiness of road, Ciel struggled with the monster. He had not found it yet, not really, though he had seen its body. When he had died the second time a story had guided him, and when he had been judged, Angela and Ash had stood with the rest. _You destroyed our beautiful wings_ , they had said. _It is your fault we are dead_. Ash with his sword and the clean suit and the face twisted in anger. Angela with her wings pierced. Ash’s body in the middle of the vortex, which expanded—Angela with the violet eyes watching as she held him deep under the water of his mind. _I could have saved you_ , she screamed. _I could have made you pure. Now you will forever be wretched: unwanted, alone_.

 _You would have snuffed me out_ , Ciel said. _You would have made me something that was not me._

 _Didn’t you become that in the end? You have no soul left to save. You are truly nothing_. 

That is what they may have spoken of, if the thing that was left had a mind. But all that remained was its anger and the smell of smoke. The smell of exhaust, which crept up between the seats, seats made of animal skins stitched into metal frames. He crept toward the beast, and it paced in its haunt, in the center of the maze, and snarled, and its teeth were sharp.

He walked out and the dogs were there. Confused creatures. Loyal things, unfairly used. When he bent down and touched them they were him, and the sky and the ground were him, and they shuddered, shuddered away from the noise and the smell, which was still here; and he felt the prickle of being watched, Helen’s eyes on his own. 

* * *

But something was working: if only the thing which was Philip’s soul, there within the walls, would be beside him. In the darkness he crawled over him, and said words that traveled from his throat into the air, but did not hear. “Never let you go, never. Eat your bones. Taste the insides warm and wet.”

“You’re not allowed to hurt me,” Philip said.

“Oh,” he crooned. “Not yet. But I have so many plans…”

Philip turned away. Sighed. “Senseless,” he said. “You won’t even do what I tell you to.”

“Anything,” he said. “Anything at all, if you will only let me closer for a moment.”

“Why,” Philip said, enunciating clearly, and the spit that flecked between his teeth went out and landed. Beautiful. “Because you want me, or because you need a soul?”

“You know the answer to that,” he said. 

“You tell me nothing but lies.”

“But I am nothing but lies.”

“What would you do, just to get more of me?”

“Anything.”

“Nothing but lies.”

He laughed. His teeth flashed and the hunger in his belly cramped, a terrible hollow pain. His eyes, which glowed, lit trails behind them, and of the whole world nothing else quite stopped moving. 

“Useless. We don’t want this. It does nothing for us.”

“The very absence of you pains me and torments me. The very world hurts and screams.”

“But it’s not what we need. What we want. We need something that can break a man.”

“This can break a man,” he said.

“It hasn’t broken you.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Leading question,” Philip said. “I won’t answer it.”

“What do you want, Philip?”

“Tell me what I want. You have the very form of what I want. You laughed when you scraped the inside of my skull clean.”

“I only mirrored your desires. You only see yourself. Why does that scare you so?”

* * *

And the turning of the bright lights and the way everything else with its smell and the lacklustre walls. Prints of feet along the floor.

“Are you here?”

“Yes sir,” Alex said.

He followed the monster into the dark.


	9. Ruin is formal — Devil's work

What was necessary was a thread, a thread to follow out of the labyrinth, when he was done. He looked up at the building which was Massacre’s altar and held close to the ones who guided him. And like a large cat, purring, the dark car was. He turned, and stepped forward without thinking, stepped into the space of Helen’s regard. _You’re the one who gave me this story_ , he thought. _The labyrinth, and the thread to pull me back._

She stepped out, frightened of something she could only sense in passing, by the stillness that was left behind it.

“Helen,” he said.

“Alex,” Helen said.

Apart from them, her demon watched.

* * *

He was at the table of an outdoor café and the table was rickety and the demon whom Helen had named Jack was across from him.

“I don’t know what you’re playing, but she is mine.”

“I know,” he said. “I don’t want her.”

“You’ll stay away from her,” Jack said.

“Or what?” Alex said. He tilted his head and smiled. It was a sweet, impish smile, and terrible.

Jack bared his teeth. “You aren’t fit to lick her boots.”

“Yes,” Alex said. “You can’t stop me. From anything I want to do. She won’t be hurt, you know. She’s a strong soul.”

“Stolen magic,” Jack said. “I can smell it in you. Sickening.”

“It’s all sickening,” Alex said. “But there’s a certain monster I want to snuff out—” he paused. Then looked down, trailed his nails across the plastic-plated menu, cracked and worn. The dark stone of the city cast its shadow across it and the sun, which ought to have been bright, was pallid, though the warmth of the air was warm, like the wet mouth of a beast is warm.

“Ciel Phantomhive,” Jack said. “I’ve heard of you—what demon hasn’t? Half-made by your betters, still clutching the one you hold.”

“Well,” Alex shrugged, unaffected. “Regardless, I’m more powerful than you. Or you would have attacked me already.”

“You’re mad,” Jack said. “Why destroy a dead god, anyway?”

“Why not?” Alex said.

Jack stared at him, open-mouthed. Then shut it. For a moment he looked faint, and then resentful. He stood up, and placed his own menu back on the table, and looked aside. “You corrupt everything you touch,” he said vehemently. “You’ve made a puppet of a demon and keep it for your own amusement: a bauble, a children’s toy. It was great, once—”

“I know.”

Jack snarled. “I’ve warned you as a courtesy, because of the memory of something that you’ve taken into yourself. Do not expect the same kindness again.” And he stalked away, into the heat-haze, and the reflected brilliance the windows cast from the sun.

* * *

“Good and evil? It’s fear and reward, under another name. You understand, now? God is the one putting us through the maze. So if I don’t want to play,” Philip shrugged. “So if I don’t want to play a rigged game. One where I’ve already lost.”

“You haven’t, though. Not by desiring what you desire.”

For the first time Philip looked shaken.

“Not damned by that then?”

“By nothing but the suffering you bring others and your renunciation of God.”

There was a great silence between them; and they did not face each other.

“...You thought you were already lost.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Philip said. With emptiness in his heavy words. “It may have mattered once, but it certainly doesn’t now.”


	10. Consecutive and slow —

When rats sleep, they dream of the maze.

Nose twitching. Feet about to run. 

The walls of the office were slow.

The walls went upward. Their roots went down.

When he faced the beast, he saw only himself:

When the beast saw him, it fashioned itself into a mirror:

When the mirror broke, it shattered:

The walls of the office were heavy, like the walls of the building were heavy.

Then, years ago, he had cried, while they drew blood from him, and did no longer.

(Liar. Julie had proven him one.)

In the center of the maze, it rested

In the center of the maze, where they battled,

In the center of the maze, with no names

They dreamed.


	11. Fail in an instant, no man did

“Oh,” said Philip. He looked about him, as though he would find the contract they had signed; find the speck among the fine print. But it was away in his safe with their signatures on it, and from this moment it did not give surcease.

“Yes,” Alex said. “I could have killed you at any point.”

“Then why wait?” Philip said.

“I think,” said Alex, gently, “that there is at least one thing that you know. And that thing is me—”

In the office, Philip stood beyond the upturned desk, which dented on its side let its cracked guts spill forth innards of metal and paper and rancid ink.

And on the other side, in the locked door’s emptiness, the demon stood. Tall and fair, it had hair that shone like pyrite, and coal’s eyes.

“Hmph,” Philip admitted, at last. “You were using me. Hell if I know for what. It’s not my soul.”

“Oh,” Alex said, with a serrated grin. “It is your soul. Don’t doubt that.”

Philip shook his head. “I’m no fool,” he said. “Probably think I am. Damn fool thing I did, letting my guard down around you.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose there wasn’t any other way it could have gone,” Philip said. “Having a thing that looks like everything you desire. That’s always the way, isn’t it. They get fooled. They tell you they won’t, and then they get fooled.”

“Yes,” Alex said.

Philip grunted. “Well then. I suppose it’s time.”

“You aren’t going to scream?” Alex said. It paced towards him, and the shadows around it paced too, their own grasping hands with their stinger points. “You aren’t going to beg?”

“You never did,” Philip said. His voice was almost steady, though the sweat stood out on his brow and the pulse of his heart raced, raced but went nowhere. “Figure it’s… only fair.”

“Not going to run?” Alex said. “The door’s open. You could.” And its voice was persuasive: for the door did appear to be open; and beyond it was the comforting lights of the hall, man-made and defiant, and Philip’s eyes reached out for it.

“I wouldn’t…” Philip said, and stopped, and his voice cracked. “I wouldn’t get out.”

“No,” Alex agreed. “You wouldn’t.”

He rested one hand on Philip’s throat.

One hand was at his chin. And one hand at his legs and feet. One hand at his ears, one hand at his eyes, and all made of the nothing that, like ink, went crawling: that, like rats, went crawling: that, like water, went crawling: and Philip screamed.

The paper in the safe, in the house away from here, turned to ashes.

And when the claws were done, nothing was left but bones.


	12. Slipping — is Crashe's law —

Only when Helen had gone, and Jack had gone, and all were in the house, did Ciel steal back to the building which was Massacre’s. He walked inside like movement from the corner of another’s eyes. In the halls there was still screaming. In the roots there was still screaming, and the stones shook with it. The white walls shook with it. The mopped floors with their sharp scent of false citrus shook with it, with the stain of rot. He walked through in his heeled black shoes, laced tightly, and his black fine child’s clothes, passing under the glances of the government men, as he walked unerringly through the labyrinth. There, where the cold shelves gleamed, was the body, and the monster, defeated, lying on the ground. It whimpered as though in pain, gnashed its teeth in defiance, and the eyes, which were the color of petaled bruises, watched him. He had all time now, and all power. He emptied the body onto the floor. He poured the flammable detergents upon it. He moved, and the walls licked with flames, and crackled, and the air was eaten, hungrily, as a dog eats. Moving at his heels. Pacing back and back again, within its confines, and reaching higher. The foundations shook and bent, and the smoke began to rise, and the emergency stairs, with their heavy doors, did not open. With the sun beating down upon it, the building crumbled from within.

And a voice within the flames began to speak; something that sounded, at first, as quiet as though it were only part of the flames. “Snuff out the unclean,” it said. “Snuff out the unnecessary.” 

The fire crackled, and ashes below it drifted like snow. “Snuff out the unwanted.” 

The words started quietly, but they grew with the flames, grew until they were a scream. They shrieked their way around the single point of darkness that Ciel was; they tore at his hair and the ribbon at his throat. They overturned the corruption of the corridors, burning the bodies down with a furnace’s heat, and leaped higher; they rained blows upon the office where Philip had died, and made bones of animals and humans alike, and burned the bones. All throughout the building, souls glowed faintly free of their confines, and the sound of turning reels of film—to those that could hear it—joined the piercing screams. The file cabinets burst, and sagged, and the papers turned to dust. The needles melted, and the wires melted and started small fires which were swallowed up in the inferno; the lights flickered off with the power and the whole thing was cast into artificial, windowless night: and at last, it was cleansed; the impurities burnt out.

Ciel pulled himself from the ruins, the gap between the other buildings extending into the earth entire; a vortex in the shape of a boy. A trailing darkness held him aloft. Its body scoured to ash, the minotaur was silent and at peace: the air, in summer sun, held only birdsong.

And when he stumbled away through the street between the cries of watchers, fearful and amazed, he found it was his own voice that was hoarse.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> 


End file.
